In the kitchen, Maureen didn’t stop talking. ‘We’ve been renting for a while now,’ she said, lifting a pot lid and chucking the potatoes that Matty was peeling into it. ‘Since Carly was ten or so. It’s not the same, but it’s easier. Most of the time. Less hassle off of people, you know.’

A nod, not knowing at all.

‘Your father had such notions. Thought he was better than all of us. Born into the wrong family. Our Kevin’s a community man now, working on getting kids in education and all that.’ She sounded haughtily indignant. ‘What was he doing for work? I know it was a while ago.’

‘Interiors. Putting in kitchens and that.’

A forceful hum through her nose. ‘Not exactly the prime-bloody-minister, then.’

Dinner was chicken nuggets, mash and peas, crowded around the kitchen table. The baby was in a plastic high chair, banging her spoon on the tray and massaging the potatoes with exploratory fingers.

‘Well, I always knew something was up,’ Maureen said. ‘My Christmas cards started getting returned to the post office. I gave up after three years. Thought you’d all done a runner. Wanted nothing more to do with us all.’

‘It’s not true,’ Matty said, so quietly that it got lost as the front door slammed.

‘’Lo,’ called an angular man’s voice.

Maureen leant back on her chair. ‘You’re bloody late. There’s none left for you.’

A brown-haired young man stuck his head round the kitchen door. ‘Working,’ he said, eyes on Matty.

Maureen made a scoffing sound. ‘Working my arse. This is your cousin. Joe’s daughter.’

Matty tried not to flinch. Gave the slightest nod.

He let out a laugh. ‘Is that right?’ A keen stare, something doggish in him, before he glanced at his sister, the slightest derogatory amusement between them both. ‘How’re you going,’ he said, before disappearing.

‘I want more potato!’ the little girl shouted, delighted at the sound of her own voice. The baby screeched a reply and clapped her hands.

‘Do you indeed,’ Maureen said, giving her a scoop of her own. She looked at Kevin, who was feeding a chicken nugget to the dog. ‘Working, he says.’ She shook her head.

Michael came back downstairs, bare-chested, his tracksuit trousers low-slung.

‘For the love of the Holy Mother, put some bloody clothes on,’ Maureen said.

‘It’s hot,’ he said. He must have been twenty-two. There was a swagger, heat coming off him. A cockerel mixed with a pit bull.

He took the chair vacated by Kevin, who’d gone back to the sofa and the TV, and leant rangy shoulders over his plate. He had a ruby-red rosary on, the wooden cross hanging between hard-raised pectorals. Welterweight. ‘That your van, then?’ A glance up from under heavy eyebrows, scanning Matty as he had done when he first came in.

‘Yeah.’

‘You live in it?’

‘Just travelling around for now.’